


This Is Life (It Goes Like This)

by doomedship



Category: Sanditon (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 14:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21163169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomedship/pseuds/doomedship
Summary: In life, one mistake can be devastating. Redemption is a long road.Sidney/Charlotte, post-episode 8.





	This Is Life (It Goes Like This)

**Author's Note:**

> Do I know what I'm doing? No. Am I going to keep doing it? Probably.

…

i.

The night she leaves he looks for answers in a bottle of gin.

It's easy oblivion, seductive and immediate. Forgetting has never felt so good.

But the morning after comes with a vengeance, and he wakes up alone on the floor of Tom's study, filthy, angry, and still so, _so_ engaged to a woman he has already worked out he can no longer stand. 

Time passes like rain.

And something like poison begins to spread in his veins.

It could be days or months going by but all he knows is at some point along the way he is no longer _dashing_ Mr Parker, no more gallantry or fun and games. He stops smiling the day she leaves, never jokes or teases, not even with Crowe and Babington. He can’t figure out what joy looks like when it's not with her.

He keeps his word and he marries on a Tuesday.

There's hardly anyone in attendance and he doesn't buy a new suit.

"Why do you look so dour, dear?" Eliza asks him, and a hundred variations thereupon as weeks bleed by, and it's like listening to foxes scream in the night. He wonders if he has enough money to buy her a separate house, one that's pretty fucking far away from him.

_Try to make her happy_, he thinks, and scoffs. He can't make her happy. He can't make anyone happy. He's like Midas, only instead of gold everything he touches turns to rot.

He has never had a good thing in his life that didn't fade away.

Next, he starts to resent Tom.

It's not like he means to, but it's impossible to ignore it forever. Tom and his vision, Tom the trailblazer. Tom who gamely pissed his way through every penny the family's ever had, and has never once stopped to acknowledge people who've propped and picked him up a thousand times over, even when by rights he deserves to be lying in the fetid pit of his own overreaching.

Tom never stops and thanks the benefactresses with their ready coin, nor the Stringers of the world, labouring away for his vainglory.

And speaking of Stringer, there's a man who's come good. Met a girl who didn't know much about architecture or cricket, but knew well enough about love, and put the spectre of what could have been behind him. He does the sensible thing, moves on, finds happiness, smiles again.

Sidney looks across the breakfast table and wonders idly how it's possible to feel so much nothing for another person as he does his wife.

"_Not the prize I was after_," he thinks to himself bitterly, and closes his eyes against the vision of chestnut curls on a summer breeze.

Tom never notices. At family lunches, he remarks upon the good fortune of his brother, to have ended up with just the woman he'd always wanted to marry, how happy it all was. The town was thriving, and so was he!

Sidney sits there and wonders again how it's possible to feel so much nothing when looking into the eyes of someone he's duty-bound to love.

But for all that he grows cold towards Eliza and to his brother and in time even to Mary and Arthur and Diana for standing by, for smiling and clapping as he went through with the worst decision of his life, it doesn't compare to the loathing he feels for himself.

For letting go of something a million times more precious than the diamonds Tom constantly hangs around Mary's throat.

For hurting her.

...

ii.

He's not arrogant enough to think she's out there somewhere missing him. She's not the kind of person to give herself up to a broken heart. And he's at least good enough to understand that he must let her go, and make sure he never crosses her path. He owes her that much.

But if he's honest, it's more that doesn't want her to see the man he has become, with his wife's fingernails digging into his forearm until he bleeds and a lead weight dragging his heart so far out of his chest he no longer feels its presence.

She once made him want to be a better man; without her, it seems, he is barely a man at all.

He considers falling onto old remedies, buying passage back to the West Indies and forgetting his past in the sunsoaked sugar fields and easy company. Rum and gold, the perfect remedy for a broken heart.

But Eliza's eyes go cold as ice when he casually suggests a business voyage, and though she smiles at him it feels like she's got a dagger in her in hand and it's slowly pressing through each layer of his flesh and bone.

She reminds him how well Sanditon is doing these days, how much a shame it would be if anything happened to the ready source of funds paying for Tom's ever-rising dreams. The facade is only half built, of course. From dust it came and to dust it can return.

He almost snaps then, almost says to hell with it and calls her bluff, he'll be a prisoner in this marriage no longer and she can take her money and fuck off to London if she really wants to.

But it's not a bluff and he knows it. Eliza has never cared in the slightest for Sanditon, nor for the children whose father would be strung up in the debtor's prison and who would never again be free of the stain of ruin if she were ever truly pushed. Revenge has always been much more her style than mercy.

So he bites his tongue and looks again to the whisky bottle, and wakes up under the blood-red sunrise in the cold yard behind the alehouse with his head swimming in a dream where he doesn't let that carriage disappear over the clifftops.

He lets Eliza hang off his arm at dinner parties, balls, his smile starting to crack more and more each day. He’s rarely sober in her presence any more, and she’s started to look at him with a rising disgust which brings him a sick satisfaction. _This is what you wanted, _he thinks, and then wonders whether he’s the one who’s after revenge.

And all the while he looks right through his wife and sees dark eyes and a ready smile looking across the riverbank.

He tells himself again and again that he will never see Charlotte Heywood again, but it makes no difference to the constant struggle to keep her out of his mind.

...

iii.

Life moves on without him.

Georgiana is engaged, then married, in the space of four months, over the next spring. He doesn't like the man she chooses, who's got a lesser title, little money and an air of cruelty about him that Georgiana doesn't see. She just wants to be free, and she thinks this is how she can get that, with a man who reeks of the world. Sidney sees through his easy smile at once, and he wonders if it's because he recognises a man just like he once was.

But he's tired of making right decisions for everyone else and so he lets her go, telling her he won't stand in the way of her happiness if she's decided this is where it lies.

He's half-drunk anyway when she tells him she's engaged, and she looks taken aback when he offers no resistance, as if she doesn't know what to do with this version of him who's already given up on every fight before even stepping into the ring.

"I thought that you'd have a few more concerns," she says reproachfully, and waits for him to take some kind of interest.

"I have had too many concerns for one man's life already," he replies. And he toasts her before he sends her away and with a caustic bid for her every happiness.

She shoots him a black look as she goes, and somewhere deep inside he feels something, a small stirring of self-loathing that he's sitting back and sending her down a path he strongly suspects will end up as the enslavement Georgiana's always been so desperate to avoid.

But she'll be in good company, he thinks, as he listens distantly to his wife berating the maid in the next room.

For months, this is his life, and he hears no news of Charlotte Heywood. He has no reason to, with his growing distance from everyone who still writes to her, and with Georgiana moving away he assumes he never will find out what sort of happy ending she gets.

He hopes it's a good one.

When Lady Denham, of all people, is the first to invoke her name to him in the middle of another excruciating luncheon, he wonders whether he's drunk again. The syllables of her name swim around in his ears like a taunting tattoo and he struggles to focus on the rest of the conversation.

"I suppose she was a fairly pretty little thing, though no great beauty," the old hag is saying. There's still an odd roaring sensation in his ears. "But Mr Balfour has five thousand a year! How she managed to catch him, I can't imagine, though that meddler Lady Worcester must have had a hand in it, I daresay."

"But she did accept him?" Mary's asking, and Sidney's heart, so long now encased in lead, flickers feebly to life for a moment. He can feel Eliza watching him, but he can't bring himself to care.

"Of course," says Lady Denham, always one to relish in gossip she possesses that no one else does. Sidney curls and uncurls his hands under the table, and tries to maintain the emptiness on his face, which is usually so easy to find. But now he can't stop the gnawing feeling deep in his stomach, and dimly wonders what will happen if he gets up and walks away right there and then. "She's a country girl from Willingden, she's hardly likely to say no to an offer like that, is she?" says Lady Denham, blunt and crowing.

"How lovely to hear she's encountered such good fortune. We hoped to hear dear Charlotte was happily settled, didn't we Sidney?" Eliza's saying sweetly, and Sidney wonders how it is that she hides her viper's tongue from the world.

"Quite," he says, levelly. "Miss Heywood deserves every happiness in a marriage, such that few of us can aspire to."

Eliza looks at him like he's filth on the hem of her dress.

Mary senses trouble and moves the conversation swiftly on, but he knows in that moment that they're already too far gone. He'd be surprised if Eliza doesn't regret this path they've taken almost as much as he does, because she can't truly be happy with such a loveless marriage, but there's nothing either of them can do about it now. It took him too long to see it, but they have always been like two left shoes. Nonsensical together, and always in want of their true partner.

And if he doesn't bother to kiss his wife's cheek or say goodnight that night, she doesn't even bother to ask.

.....

iv.

In the autumn, Georgiana visits, and does not bring her husband.

Sidney sees the shadows under her eyes, sees the gauntness in her cheeks. He knows at once that Lady Baring is not a title she's been wearing well.

He's been living in alcoholic apathy while she's been living in hell.

"Stay here," he says, and there's a hint of the old guardian in his tone, just enough to lend him steel, though his bone-weariness wears it thin. "Do not go back."

Georgiana's eyes, once so full of fight, brim quietly with tears.

Eliza spits and threatens at the news, but he remains unmoved. He has done enough wrong by Georgiana over the years and he's tired of being a dog on a leash to Eliza's money, which is no longer the weapon it used to be. Tom's finally got enough other patrons to keep Sanditon spinning, just, and even if he doesn't, Sidney has long since given up his role as a sacrifice at the altar of his brother's ambitions. These days he's got no more blood to spare.

He checks on Georgiana later, looks at her with tired eyes as she sits on the bed barefoot like a child.

"She didn't marry, you know," she says, after he's already turned to leave. He stops with his hand on the door.

"Who?" he says, as if there can be any doubt.

Georgiana looks at him insolently, a spark of her old self in her eyes. "She wrote to him the next day to call it off. She told me she couldn't marry because she didn't think she could love again."

It hurts.

He reflects on this later, when he's alone in bed. And realises that he wishes that she had loved Balfour, Balfour with the five thousand, so at least, at the very least, he would not have had her unhappiness on his hands as well.

"Is she happy?" he asks Georgiana, and Georgiana looks at him like he's an idiot.

"Are you?" she says pointedly.

...

v.

It takes him three more days to gather his resolve.

It's been two years since he left Charlotte Heywood on the cliffside, and it's two years too many, but he feels the magnet pull like gravity.

He rides to Willingden through wind and rain, and stumbles onto her father's estate like the wild nomad he's become.

He's lucky he's not shot on sight.

Her father looks like he wants to punch him when he finds out who Sidney is, and forbids him from seeing his daughter. But before he can push him out the door and back into the rain, she's already there.

And all the air he breathes is stolen from his lungs.

"What are you doing here?" she says. She doesn't sound angry. She doesn't sound happy. She doesn't sound anything at all, and he realises this must be how he sounds to everyone he's known in the last two years.

Her father takes some convincing to give Charlotte a moment alone with him and he doesn't blame him. He almost doesn't want him to be alone with her either.

And then he loses his grasp on the English language when he's standing there looking across the room at her, so much the same and yet not.

"You did not ride to Willingden through the night to stare at me in silence," she says. Her voice is as painfully sweet as he remembers, though older, with an edge of something he knows was never there before she met him.

"I came to say I'm sorry," he says numbly. She raises her eyebrows.

"That's it? Two years and you want to say sorry?"

This was a mistake. She's right; he has no business being here, doesn't deserve a moment more of her life, which is precious and deserves to be lived far away from his tainting hands.

"I heard- I heard you broke an engagement," he says, and a real flame ignites then in those lovely dark eyes of hers.

"Yes," she says defiantly, and it's like it's two years ago and she's brand new and feisty and always angry with him. She takes a few bold steps towards him. "I decided I of all people should know that I could not marry for money and without love," she says. "Not even to a man who was in love with me."

_Not like you_.

She doesn't say it but he still breaks a little more.

She has always been a better soul than him. For all that he claims knowledge and experience the truth is from the moment they met he's been playing catch up to the things she's already known.

And looking at her in all her wit and brightness still, he can be glad at least that he is the only one of them to have withered away because of the choices he made. Charlotte Heywood is still _so_ alive.

"Won't your wife be concerned about where you are, Mr Parker?" she says at last, when he just stands there, and says nothing more.

"Oh, I doubt it," he says scornfully, and there's such venom in his voice she looks a bit taken aback. "You have always deserved better than me," he says, and for a moment she just looks at him.

"I know my worth," she says simply.

He vows to remember how she looks in that moment, in the half-light with her hair down and her back so straight and bold.

For he thinks he may never see her again.

The ride back to Sanditon almost breaks him. He considers just lying down in the dust and the cold at the roadside, and giving up once and for all, but it's harder to do that than he wants it to be. So he has to keep riding. And he goes home.

And Eliza Parker is not alone.

...

vi.

In some ways it's better now their marriage is openly broken.

He's glad for her broken vows, because God knows he never meant his.

Perversely he finds it a bit easier to feel something for Eliza, now he knows she's been every bit as unhappy as he has. He even finds some guilt within himself for bringing this upon her, even though in reality she's the one who manipulated this into their lives.

What he doesn't actually feel is anger over her infidelity. It's almost a relief.

He finds her weeping in the library one day, and stands rooted in the doorway while she sobs.

"Why did we always make such a mess of things?" she says. "Why can't we just be happy?"

"Because we were never meant to be. We're poison to each other," he says, and it might be the first time he's said an honest word to her in years. "I'm sorry."

And he is.

And for the first time in her life Eliza does something that's not entirely selfish.

"Divorce me," she says, and he feels like the whole world has been tossed on its head.

"Impossible," he replies, and leaves the room.

Because it is. While he might just have the right, since she's an adulteress and he's a wealthy man, it's a stain he doesn't want even Eliza to have on the rest of her life. Not to mention the cost, and the ugliness in petitioning the courts, airing every detail of their lives in public.

So for a while they simply live separate lives. Little contact, little exchanged.

Then one day he comes back from a ride, and finds the house deathly silent, even more so than usual. The fires are unlit, the table empty, the servants dismissed. There's not a trace of his wife's presence, and he starts to feel a prickle of unease.

It's almost dark and Eliza has few friends here; she is not in the habit of going out unexpectedly.

He looks in every room, and the last one is the library where he found her weeping. She is not in it, but a note written in her hand is.

_Dear Sidney,_ she writes. _I'm sorry. I thought you'd grow to love me again, in time. But you're right. We are poison and I cannot bear it either. Don't try to find me, because you won't, and you don't want to. I could be dead for all either of us know by now, so please, just live your life as if I am_."

His hands tighten so much on the note it crumples. He wonders about doing as she says, burning the note, telling the world she never said a word about her plans and never looking to find her.

But he's still somewhere inside himself a good man and he can't sit back. He gets on his horse, goes out searching, gathers his friends and family in the morning to help, but it's in vain. Eliza is right; she could be anywhere, could be dead.

And he will never know.

Finally, Eliza has set him free.

It's just he doesn't know if he has it in him any more to leave the cage.

...

vii.

He sells the house.

There's nothing but bad memories in it and remarkably few personal effects for almost three years of shared life. He buys another, modest house for him and Georgiana.

He never does find out what happened to Eliza. No trace of her is found and she's eventually pronounced officially dead, for the purposes of their marriage, or so he's told by the lawyer he's urged to engage. It leaves him free to marry again.

If Georgiana gives him a meaningful look when he's told this, he ignores it, because it's of no consequence.

If there's anything he's taken away from the situation it's that he was right when he said he was ill suited for matrimony.

He drinks a lot. More than he should. Starts to think he can't sleep unless he's blind drunk. Georgiana confronts him about it more than once, but he gives her only surly silence or tells her to mind her business. It's his life.

Months pass, and he gets drunk.

Georgiana shouts and then she schemes.

When the good weather returns, Charlotte Heywood comes to stay.

Not at their house, obviously, but Tom and Mary's. It's all so horrendously familiar. Her coach arrives on a misty afternoon, a few weeks off the high summer season, and Georgiana strongarms him into going over there for lunch. He can barely remember how to button a waistcoat, tie his cravat. His hat bears a layer of dust.

At lunch he expects her to ignore him, to treat him with the cold disdain he knows he deserves after everything he's done to her. But to his surprise she meets his eye across the table and the corners of her mouth lift into a faint smile.

He stares at her, not a bit changed by the years, only that perhaps now she seems to have an air of surety about her, the sort that only comes with the passing of time. Her smile is steady, slow and unhurried.

The constant pressure crushing his heart seems to lessen just a tiny bit.

He walks alone by the coves that afternoon, and he's surprised, but not, to hear the sound of footsteps on the stones behind him. She stands next to him, looking out on the waves.

"I did not think I'd see you again," he says, casting her a tired sidelong glance. She's wearing crimson and her cheeks are rosy.

"Well, they don't call me the ubiquitous Miss Heywood for nothing," she says, and in spite of everything, he lets out a small puff of laughter. "Georgiana told me what happened with Eliza. I'm sorry, Sidney."

He looks at her in confusion. Why should she, of all people, be the one to deliver the most sincere of sympathies over the woman who ruined both their happiness?

"You look terrible," she says, as if by way of explanation, studying the ocean with a pensive gaze. "Hardly the same man at all."

"I suspect I'm not," he says shortly. Then looks at her wearily. "What do you want to hear me say, Charlotte?" he says. "I did wrong by you, but God knows I have nothing left to give you. I have no more words to tell you I'm sorry."

"I know that," she says levelly. "I am not in need of anything from you. I only came to see that you were all right."

"Well. I fear this is as all right as I may ever be," he says abruptly, suddenly all too aware of how he must appear to her. "I am sorry to disappoint."

He turns and heads back into the shadows.

She visits Georgiana later that night, and they sit in the parlour laughing just like old times. He can't bring himself to emerge to see her but the low hum of her voice through the door of his study is soothing and he doesn't reach for a third glass of wine like usual.

He wonders what he'll do when she's gone.

...

viii.

In July, Georgiana's husband Edward Baring comes looking for her while she's with Charlotte in the sitting room.

There's an argument in the hallway, and Sidney comes running. His eyes are bloodshot and he feels about as sharp as a bent and rusty nail with half a bottle in him but he's still Georgiana's guardian, and old habits die hard.

He tells Baring in no uncertain terms to leave, but the man's a shark and he's determined to have his pound of flesh.

He takes a swing at Sidney, who's many months out of practice and is certainly no longer the honed fighter he once was. He takes a beating in the hallway that he almost relishes, marvelling in the feeling of his skin and sinew blistering with every blow. At least it's different from the never ending black cloud he spends each and every day in, he thinks. At least it's feeling something.

It takes Charlotte swinging a fire poker and Georgiana screaming bloody murder to get Baring out of the house.

Georgiana goes to bed in a flurry of tears and once she's finally settled upstairs Charlotte comes back down to find him sitting broodingly by the fireside in his armchair with blood down his chin and a rapidly swelling eye.

She sighs and gets a cloth and basin from the kitchens. She perches at his side on the arm of his chair and wipes the blood slowly from his face, the strokes tender and the feeling of her gentle touch so alien he can only sit and stare.

Then she takes his hand and soothes away the angry red of his knuckles, and sits a moment holding onto him with more familiarity than he cares to recognise.

"You can't go on like this," she says softly. "Something has to change."

He looks bleakly up at her, and nods. The feel of her soft skin on his is disconcerting after so long without a touch.

But what he doesn't expect is to wake up late in the morning and find her already there, gathering all his bottles in her arms, dumping dozens of them into a creaking box in the hall. She gives him a defiant stare as she passes to fetch another batch from his study, brushing against him as she edges around him in the narrow corridor.

He thinks about protesting for all of two seconds, then resigns himself to his fate.

That's not to say it's not hell. He wants a drink desperately by midday and he's prepared to yell at her to get it, but she's made of steel and courage these days and she only rolls her eyes as she tells him there's fresh apples in the kitchen if he wants to try that instead.

He wants to throw an apple at her damn, always-right head as he stalks past and locks himself in his study.

"Sidney, come for a walk," she soon says from outside, like a mother cajoling her child. The bottles are gone and she has shifted her focus.

"Can't you just leave me to waste away in peace?" he says bad-temperedly.

"It's this, or a visit to Dr Fuch's shower bath," she says. And he believes her.

They walk aimlessly up the hillside and he manages not to talk about the weather. In fact, he doesn't really talk at all, and she seems unbothered by this. Because she's not the uncertain girl she was when she walked with him here three years ago; she has grown stronger and more confident and so utterly powerful in her time away from him that it almost makes him want to weep.

He has always improved in her presence, while she has flourished in his absence.

"Why did you come back to Sanditon?" he asks suddenly, and she looks surprised.

"I have loved Sanditon since the moment I first set foot here," she says. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Because of what a fool I was to let you leave it," he says bitterly. Faces her on the clifftop a shadow of who he once was. Dares her to look at what he is.

She puts her hand on the crook of his arm and guides him back into stride with her.

"One step at a time, Sidney," she says. "There are few things which truly cannot be saved. Even you."

...

ix.

She takes to walking with him in the morning, he thinks to ensure he's up and dressed for the day, and not tempted to slide into a pointless tailspin alone in the study when she's not there.

She can't be expected to mind him all the time, and she doesn't. But he finds the thought of her efforts are just enough of a deterrent to prevent him sourcing another stash of alcohol and hiding it under the floorboards. For now, at least. He doesn't rule that option out entirely.

He doesn't really know why she's doing this. He's a mess and he's certainly not a prospect for her. Not any more. But she's got a dogged determination that for some reason she's using to haul him bodily out of the dust and ash she found him lying in some two months ago, and he can't deny that he is grateful for it. For the first time in years he feels like there is somewhere to go.

Summer's turning to autumn fast, though, and he wonders what comes next. A deathly winter without her is not a prospect he thinks he can handle, but she surely has no reason to stay.

She is entitled to her own life, and he doesn't want to bring her down with him. Not again. Never again.

"You don't have to keep doing this," he tells her, when she comes around again in the afternoon, and she greets him brightly in the doorway.

"I know," she says. "But has it occurred to you that I might want to?"

So he lets her in.

Slowly, slowly, Charlotte Heywood is working her way back into his heart, which has lain stone cold in his chest for three long years. It terrifies as much as mystifies him, and he longs to know what she's thinking, but in her time away Charlotte Heywood has learnt the art of concealing her feelings. She's not an open book any more, and these days she is more inscrutable than he.

"Am I a broken thing, to be mended, to you?" he asks, disturbing the silence one evening when she's sitting with a button to be sewn back onto one of his coats. She doesn't like sewing, he knows, and she's frowning like it's personally offended her.

She takes a moment to answer, and lays down the needle.

"You're more than that," she says softly. "You will always be more than that."

"I can't give you anything," he reminds her. She gives a brief smile.

"If only you could understand it was never about what you could give me."

"You should return to London. Get Lady Worcester to introduce you to someone with some sense and modest fortune."

"And you should stop drinking," she retorts. He glowers at her.

"I have nothing left to drink," he growls. She smiles prettily.

"Indeed. The Stringers were all too happy to oblige your donation. Very generous of you, I must say."

He is torn between an urge to leave the room in a temper and to go over to her and kneel at her feet and bask in the glow of her misguided certainty that he has some kind of future ahead of him.

He settles for doing neither and just sits where he is, glaring, but the small self satisfied smile on her face softens him more than he cares to admit. And when he walks her back to Tom's that night he longs against all better judgment to touch her, just once, as she pauses on the threshold. But he holds back, fingers curling and uncurling, knowing she is not his to hold.

She looks at him curiously, searchingly, and it's like his thoughts are etched in big letters on his forehead. She leans forward, her hand upon his shoulder as she presses a small, chaste kiss to his cheek.

"You should know that... whatever there was to forgive between us, I've already long since done it," she says. "So please. Don't punish yourself any longer on my account."

He stands, dumbstruck, and she smiles like she knows the secrets of life itself.

"See you in the morning," she says.

He lies awake for a while that night and considers her words as they run through his head like a catechism.

He has never been a very religious man but he thinks her words sound a lot like absolution.

...  
x.

"You should marry her," Georgiana tells him bluntly one breakfast while she spreads honey liberally on toast. "She's not going to marry anyone else."

He looks at her wearily over the top of his newspaper.

"That's not to say she should marry me," he says. "I should think the both of us know by now how bad an ill-advised marriage can be."

Georgiana shoots him a look full of attitude. Away from Baring, her old spirit has returned.

"Charlotte Heywood is at least a thousand times the person either of us married, so that's hardly the problem, is it?" she says crisply. And he cannot deny it. The problem is and has always been him.

Courting Charlotte is not really something he thinks can actually happen, not now, but he catches sight of himself in the mirror one day and realises that he's started taking better care of himself. Without the drinking his eyes are brighter and his skin no longer sallow, and he bothers to shave and dress properly now that he's almost constantly in the company of women.

He has to admit Charlotte in particular inspires a desire in him not to entirely resemble a dockyard vagrant any longer.

Mary and Tom remark upon the change in him. Even Tom, who had previously just about managed to tear his eyes from his latest building project to notice his brother's rapid decline into dishevelled depression. Of course, he never quite got round to doing anything about it, other than supplying him with more wine.

Now he comments blithely that he is relieved to see Sidney back in the land of the living after losing Eliza, the_ love of his life_, and that he is glad no intervention was needed this time.

He is resigned to his brother's flaws and reins in his temper, just. Tom Parker will never change; he is simply not made to think of others in the way that he should, and will always prioritise his own hopes and dreams over everything else. He will also be blissfully ignorant of his own failings until he drops dead. 

Mary on the other hand looks at Sidney with guilt mixed into her relief. She touches his arm in apology every now and then, because she, unlike Tom, knew exactly what his transaction of a marriage had cost him, and Charlotte too. She tells him quietly she hopes he finds the happiness he deserves.

But it was never Mary's fault either, and gradually he lets his ill will towards her ebb away. Her only flaw in all of this has been loving Tom, which will always be a dangerous weakness, and one he is so very guilty of too. Loving Tom has a habit of coming at a price.

He goes swimming, riding and boxing again. His body regains its strength and vitality and he stands a little straighter instead of hunching at the shoulder. And most crucially, the grey, polluting haze seems to have lifted from his mind so that he finally thinks clearly for the first time in years.

Or so it seems, until he's in Charlotte's presence. And then it all goes out the window and he feels like a gibbering idiot again.

_I am a grown man of thirty and still this afflicts me_, he thinks ill-temperedly, as he walks beside her in the crisp late autumn breeze and can think of nothing at all to say.

"How long are you going to stay?" he suddenly says, embedding his cane into the loamy soil, because it's the thing that's been weighing on his mind for weeks. How much longer he has until his world turns back on its head. How much longer until goodbye.

She looks surprised, and stops mid step. She's wearing a soft blue pelisse and her hat ribbons are fluttering on the breeze, and she looks like an extension of the waves, tumbling effortlessly over the cliffside. Just as beautiful, just as powerful, just as capable of stealing him away.

"Do you wish me away?" she asks lightly, and he thinks he detects a hint of genuine concern under her levity. This time, he is quick to set her straight, to make sure no misunderstanding takes root between them. This time, he makes sure she knows what she's worth.

"I have never in my life wished you away, and nor do I believe I ever could," he says honestly. "But often I fear you could make a better life without me in it."

She stops, then. Takes hold of his wrist and drags him to look at her. "I had no choice the last time we parted," she says. "You were taken away from me and I was torn apart. This time, I do have a choice. And I'm _not_ going away from you."

He can't bear it any longer.

His thinly spread resolve crumbles in the face of her open-eyed honesty, her tender sincerity a persistent thread of pure gold running through her core even after all the heartache she has witnessed. She has every right to be cynical, and yet she is not. She has every right to reject him, and still, she does not.

So he bends and kisses her like she is his very last tether to life itself.

And with how far he has fallen, he thinks perhaps she just might be.

…

xi.

He doesn't know exactly what to do with the change in their relationship.

Custom would dictate that he immediately make her a proposal of marriage, but he realises he doesn't have a clue if that's even what she wants.

Rather than stew in it as he might once have, he simply bites the bullet and asks her. He thinks they have already wasted so much time taking wrong turns, he does not wish to court another.

They're in the small sitting room once again, and it's warm and intimate, and his tongue is loosened by the ease with which she sits beside him and tucks her feet up under her.

"Do I want to marry?" she echoes incredulously. "Is this your idea of a proposal? It's a bit impersonal."

"No," he says, offended. "I am merely establishing whether it's worth my while acquiring whatever violins and snow white doves you seem to believe a proposal ought to have."

She snorts, and untucks her feet so she can look at him better.

"I don't mind," she says. He frowns at that, and she shrugs. "I am not so young as I once was, Sidney. My head isn't full of flowers and love-hearts. I am not expecting you to make me an offer of marriage simply because of what transpired yesterday."

"Charlotte, I would marry you, of course that is my wish," he says, and her eyes betray her slight surprise. "But I would first be sure that I am the man you believe deserves your acceptance. And I cannot say I am sure of that this day."

She smiles slowly. "Very diplomatically put, sir," she says. He searches her for any sign of hurt, of disappointment, ready to drop to his knees before her and beg her to understand it's not her, it's never been because of her, only because of him. But she looks calm, accepting, untroubled, and he feels his heart throb.

He loves her more than he has ever loved anything or anyone else.

But this time he is determined to do it right.

He courts her slowly. Gets to know every little thing about her, how she loves the dawn but struggles to leave her bed, how she favours walking barefoot in the shallow seawater over almost any other feeling in the world.

He marvels at all there is to uncover of her.

There is no hurry, no impending sense of dread spurring them to act before they are ready now. He holds her hand as he walks with her on the clifftops but doesn't kiss her again, not yet.

He admits that's a struggle, for almost every second he longs to pull her close, but he is determined not to make a mess of things.

Mary gives them a knowing smile when they start spending more time alone together than is strictly proper, but it's not as if there's anyone left to shock. They are old news anyway, now, and it's a relief to be free from all of that speculation.

Tom notices nothing, but that's to be expected.

They walk along the beachfront, and she dares to put her toes in the frigid water against all good sense, and he rolls his eyes and hands her his coat when she comes back shivering and damp and admitting winter is coming and the water is no longer a viable pastime.

And all the while Sidney looks inside himself, and talks to Georgiana, and tries to weigh and measure every inch of his being to be sure that he is worthy of Charlotte Heywood.

Meanwhile, Charlotte Heywood grows impatient.

…

xii.

Winter comes to Sanditon all at once. Frost starts to cling to the trees and windowpanes and the fires are barely enough to keep back the cold some nights.

In the evening he takes to drawing hot baths, an indulgence his younger self would have scorned, but after everything he's endured he thinks he can forgive himself this simple pleasure on his old bones.

He's only just emerged from one and he's stood with his clean shirt untucked and stubble rough on his jaw as he scrubs his wet hair with a linen cloth.

He almost jumps out of his skin when he sees her in the doorway.

She is in a white shift under her deep auburn gown and she has an impish smile on her face as she stands there, unapologetic in the candlelight.

"Charlotte," he says, blinking stupidly. "I didn't realise you were still here."

"Yes," she says, taking a few bold steps into the room. "I was playing cards with Georgiana and we quite forgot the time," she says innocently.

He wonders if he should try and do up his buttons and find a waistcoat, then decides the damage, so to speak, is already done. He takes a step towards her. 

"I see," he says tensely. "And... how can I help you?"

"You can relax, for a start," she says lightly. "I am not here to steal your virtue."

He laughs at that, and it feels strange, but good. Like this is how life should look.

Warm in the firelight with her in his bedroom.

He tries not to dwell on the implications, the intimacy, and focuses on her as she crosses the room to him. He is confused as to what she wants, but not for long as she reaches out and pulls him firmly down by the front of his shirt.

He feels the fire in his belly ignite.

He kisses her fiercely, like he selfishly hopes she has never been kissed before. He knows for sure he has never in his life kissed anyone with such an overwhelming, desperate desire, or with such blazing and powerful love that his knees are shaking with the force of it running through him.

She gasps against his mouth and arches against him and he knows, then, that she feels it too, and that this is it. This _is_ life as it should be, and this is what he wants for the rest of his life. He is done with waiting and with caution; he wants her more than he has ever wanted anything.

"Marry me," he murmurs against her lips, and he feels her smile.

"I believe I was promised violins and white doves," she says, and he laughs.

"Quite right," he says. "How can I make it up to you?"

"I assume you know a few ways," she says, and it's impossible to ignore the direction of her thoughts when she's standing there with that flushed, dark-eyed look on her face and the bed mere feet away.

He inhales slowly, trying not to consider the implications of Charlotte in his bedroom. Charlotte in his bed. Just Charlotte, in every way that she is.

He kisses her again, and she bites his lip and flicks her tongue against his until he's shifting involuntarily into her, and he's afraid he'll lose his mind.

He draws back and looks at her, so warm and trusting under his hands.

"I believe I'm still due your answer," he says unevenly, pressing his forehead against hers. She smiles.

"The answer has been yes for quite some time," she says softly. He feels a jolt of guilt, then, for he has kept her waiting.

Not just these past weeks, but for years, years she has spent paying for his mistakes.

He thinks he could apologise, could explain how much he wishes he had chosen differently, but then, he thinks, she already knows it all. How could she not, when she is the one who found him lying in the ugly ruins of his broken life and sat right down beside him until he found the strength to get up and walk away.

He has no secrets from her, and nor will he ever. 

She has always known the measure of him, and he thanks God that she still considers him enough.

When they break the news, of course the only one surprised is Tom.

"Engaged?" he says incredulously, looking between Sidney and Charlotte as if he has never before fathomed the idea that an unmarried man and woman might choose to marry. "But this is marvellous news. Mary, can you believe this? I had _so_ hoped to see you happy, Sidney, but I feared it was never to happen after you lost Eliza so cruelly."

There's a mutual grimace, exchanged by everyone else in the room, and Sidney briefly contemplates sitting Tom down and explaining the many and varied ways in which he's been utterly ridiculous, but they have come too far and he has wasted too much time to consider wasting any more on him.

"And you, Charlotte, you have been practically one of the family for so long, I can't tell you how delighted I am that I shall be able to call you my sister!" Tom carries on blithely. At least he can always be relied upon to be loud and enthused in his appreciation, and Charlotte is more generous than he. She seems to bear Tom no ill will, even after everything, and lets him share the joy he can see in the brightness of her smile.

…

xiii.

They are married on a Saturday, a few days before Christmas. There's holly in the church and she wears snowdrops in her hair.

And finally he wears a new suit.

And when he takes her home that night it doesn't feel strange, and he realises he's only considered this house a home since she made it hers, and she did that long ago.

It's she who leads him across the threshold and pulls him by the hand to the bedroom he fully intends to be theirs for each and every night, and kisses him until they fall together into ecstasy.

And when they wake up together in the morning light, it’s like stepping into the sunlight for the first time.

Ashes and bones are gone.

This is life anew.


End file.
